24 who acknowledges that he has sustained his interest in how politicians speak long after he ceased to care what they were saYIng: I was naturally pleased that Spiro T A . d " I b o " . gnew sal , ain not a IgOt right in V ewsweek Inagazine. It's an- other indication that we're in for a re- vival of an oratorical device I have always thought of as the Negative Boast The best-known Negative Boast of recent tunes, of course, caIne froin Richard Nixon, who, while he was President of the United States, told a group of editors, "!'In not a crook." Agnew's Negative Boast tends to con- firin a theory I have been polishing- that, given enough talk shows and press conferences and late-night airport inter- views, ahnost any political figure win eventually deny what he knows the electorate suspects hitn of being. Before the Nixon AdlnInistration, I was worried that the Negative Boast might have become extinct. Several years ago, when a friend of Inine was a cainpaign adviser for the Inayor of an upstate city whose chief executives were 1 egularly called to justice for one sort of Inalfeasance or another, I went so far as to suggest the cainpaign motto "Never Been Indicted. " My friend be- gan not returning Iny calls. I later saw a bUlnper sticker for a Presidential can- didate called Papoon whose Inotto was "Not Insane," but the fact that the bUlnper sticker identified him as the representative of the National Surrealist Light People's Party led me to believe that he did not have realistic expecta- tions of being elected. For a long time, 1 had to make do with col- lecting examples of a sepa- rate but related device called the Negative Thrust-a can- didate's denying that he is, say, a machine politician as a way of Í1nplying that his op- ponent is precisely that. The Negative Thrust is quite cominon, but still pleasing when used adroitly-the best recent exainple being Mary Anne Krupsak's running for lieutenant gover- nor of New York on the motto "She's Not Just One of the Boys." Even be- fore Watergate, though, I had a feeling I could count on Nixon or Agnew to revive the Negative Boast; they were, after all, suspected of so Inuch. Their boasts, in fact, turned out to be inter- changeable-the sort of syminetrical touch that we collectors cherish. If Nixon had been questioned closely on lus taped remarks about the Jewish cabal in the arts, he might have blurted out, "1 am not a bigot." Had Agnew re- mained in public life long enough to discuss the bill of particu] ars drawn up against hÏtn by the United States Attor- ney's office in BaltÎ1nore, he could have been expected to say, "1' In not a crook." I felt quite early that Jitniny Car- ter had a Negative Boast in hÏtn, and he confirined my instinct when he was asked whether there was, as a former speech writer of his had charged, SOlne difference between his private and public stateinents on defense spending. He did not say that the speech writer was Inistaken or that their recollections differed; he said, "1 ain not a liar." What is so enjoyable about such an out- burst is that it always brings into the cainpaign a word that the press and the opponents of the politician in question have hesitated to use. Even in the stretch-run chase of Watergate, nobody just came right out and said that Nixon was a crook. The customary way of treating Jitniny Carter's standards of veracity has been to talk about fuzziness or about some difference in what he says he accoinplished as governor of Georgia and what his old opponents in the legislature say he accoinplished; it took Carter hitnself to introduce the word. I love harsh language in a caIn- paign. I long ago lost interest In who governs Great Britain-let them worry about it, I say-but whenever l'ln there I attend any political rally I hear about, juSt on the chance that SOlneone will stand up in the back row and shout, "Oh, rubbish!" I was hoping that Carter's outburst would give the Negative Boast what they're calling "Inoinentuin" these days. (I much preferred "bandwagon," by the way; it conjures up a picture of people cheerfully hopping aboard instead of being bowled over by SOlne- one running too hard to slow down for a bahy carriage or a wall) As I envisioned what might happen-"the " h scenano, t e mOlnentuln people would call it-Henry Jackson, inspired by Carter, would finish off a forty-five-minute re- cital of his senatorial accoinplishinents with the ringing words "I ain not a bore!" Gerald Ford, figuring he Inight have to run against a Jitniny Carter- Jerry Brown ticket with the Negative Thrust Inotto of "Vote for Gerald Ford-Not Flaky," would call re- porters into the Oval Office and an- nounce, "Your President is definitely not a dope." The Deinocrats, having decided not to draft H uinphrey after he went on national television to say, "I ain not a blabberinouth," would turn to Edward Kennedy. Senator Kennedy would walk to the Convention podIuln and say, "Fellow-Deinocrats, fellow-.L lnericans I ain not a candi- date." . . Crusade A REGULAR passenger on the triangular Los ...-\.ngeles-to- N ew Y ork-to- W ashington-to- Los Angeles travel circuit is a businessinan we know nained Harold Willens. Out in L.A., Mr. Willens spends Inuch of his tÏtne tending the affairs of the Factory Equipinent Corporation, a textile-Ina- chinery Inanufacturing cOlnpany that he started in 1949 and now serves as chairinan of the board. He also used to control extensive cOlnlnercial real- estate interests-and is sOlnewhat in- vol ved in that business still-but he began to curtail that during the Inid- sixties, when, as Mr. Willens likes to say, he "went public" and devoted hitnself to organizing other business- men to oppose the war in Indo-China. Since then, Mr. Willens has stayed public, in behalf of one cause or an- other, and it is these activities that fre- quently bring hitn cross-country. When he was in town on his most recent swing-en route to Washington and then hOlne again-he invited us to COlne visit hitn and learn how he has been channelling his public interests lately, and we accepted. Mr. Willens greeted us at the door of a friend's suite at the HaInpshire House, where he was staying. He was wearing gray slacks, a white shirt, a blue-white-and- brown striped necktie, and ainber- tinted aviator glasses. Because he had no tÏtne to waste, he got down to busi- ness. "l'ln in town today to see, individ- ually and in sinall groups, those ideo- logical brothers who might be willing to finance a direct-mail cainpaign that would reach a million people," he said. "1 figure I have to raise about two hundred thousand dollars to make the plan work. The idea is to find thirty thousand people willing to becoine part of a new crusade, the Citizens for Energy Action. A group of us organ- ized this thing last Septeinber, when we gathered at Iny house in Malibu to dis- cuss ways of cOIn batting the economic and political powers of the big oil COIn- panies. Leopold Wyler, a businessinan who-along wIth Inyself, two other businessinen, an economist, and Paul Newinan, the actor-is one of the founders of the Citizens for Energy Action, said at the tÎ1ne, 'I see the oil cOlnpanies as a Trojan horse, mouth- ing phrases about free enterprise and destroying free enterprise froin within.'